The City of Fire Part 10

He took down the receiver and Opal's voice greeted him, mockingly, tauntingly from his own world. The little ivy leaved church with its Saint Cecilia at the organ, and its strange weird message about a G.o.d that cared for man's ways, dropped away like a dream that was past.

When he hung up the receiver and turned back to his couch again the girl had closed the window. It annoyed him. He did not know how his giddy badinage had clashed in upon the last words of the sermon.

It seemed a long time after the closing hymn before the little throng melted away down the maple lined street. The young man watched them curiously from behind his curtain, finding only food for amus.e.m.e.nt in most of them. And then came the minister, lingering to talk to one here and there, and his wife--it was undoubtedly his wife, even the hare-brained Laurie knew her, in the gray organdie, with the white at her neck, and the soft white hat. She had a pleasant light in her eyes, and one saw at once that she was a lady. There was a grace about her that made the girl seem possible. And lastly, came the girl.

She stepped from the church door in her white dress and simple white hat, white even to her little shoes, and correct in every way, he could see that. She was no country gawk! She came forth lightly into the sunshine which caught her hair in golden tendrils around her face as if it loved to hide therein, and she was immediately surrounded by half a dozen urchins. One had brought her some lilies, great white starry things with golden hearts, and she gathered them into her arms as if she loved them, and smiled at the boys. One could see how they adored her.

She lingered talking to them, and laid her hand on one boy's shoulder, he walking like a knight beside her trying to act as if he did not know her hand was there. His head was drooped, but he lifted it with a grin at last and gave her a nod which seemed to make her glad, for her face broke forth in another smile:

"Well, don't forget, to-night," she called as they turned to go, "and remember to tell Billy!"

Then she came trippingly across the gra.s.s, a song on her lips. Some girl! Say! She certainly was a stunner!

VIII

Opal Verrons was small and slight with large childlike eyes that could look like a baby's, but that could hold the very devil on occasions. The eyes were dark and l.u.s.trous with long curling black lashes framing them in a face that might have been modeled for an angel, so round the curves, so enchanting the lips, so lofty the white brow. Angele Potocka had no lovelier set to her head, no more limpal fire in her eye, than had Opal Verrons. Indeed her lovers often called her the Fire Opal. The only difference was that Angele Potocka developed her brains, of which she had plenty, while Opal Verrons had placed her entire care upon developing her lovely little body, though she too had plenty of brains on occasion.

And she knew how to dress! So simply, so slightly sometimes, so perfectly to give a setting--the right setting--to her little self.

She wore her heavy dark hair bobbed, and it curled about her small head exquisitely, giving her the look of a Raphael Cherub or a boy page in the court of King Arthur. With a flat band of silver olive leaves about her brow, and the soft hair waving out below, nothing more was necessary for a costume save a brief drapery of silver spangled cloth with a strap of jewels and a wisp of black malines for a scarf. She was always startling and lovely even in her simplest costume. Many people turned to watch her in a simple dark blue serge made like a child's girded with a delicate arrangement of medallions and chains of white metal, her dark rough woollen stockings rolled girlishly below white dimpled knees, and her feet shod in flat soled white buckskin shoes. She was young enough to "get away with it," the older women said cattishly as they watched her stroll away to the beach with a new man each day, and noted her artless grace and indifferent pose. That she had a burly millionaire husband who still was under her spell and watched her jealously only made her more interesting, and they pitied her for being tied to a man twice her age and bulky as a bale of cotton. She who could dance like a sylph and was light on her little feet as a thistle down. Though wise ones sometimes said that Opal had her young eyes wide open when she married Ed Verrons, and she had him right under her little pink well manicured thumb. And some said she was not nearly so young as she looked.

Her hands were the weakest point in Opal Verron's whole outfit. Not that they were unlovely in form or ungraceful. They were so small they hardly seemed like hands, so undeveloped, so useless, with the dimpling of a baby's, yet the sharp nails of a little beast. They were so plump and well cared for they were fairly sleek, and had an old wise air about them as she patted her puffy curls daintily with a motion all her own that showed her lovely rounded arm, and every needle-pointed sh.e.l.l-tinted finger nail, sleek and puffy, and never used, not even for a bit of embroidery or knitting. She couldn't, you know, with those sharp transparent little nails, they might break. They were like her little sharp teeth that always reminded one of a mouse's teeth, and made one shudder at how sharp they would be should she ever decide to bite.

But her smile was like the mixing of all smiles, a baby's, a woman-of-the-world, a grieved child's, and a spirit who had put aside all moral purpose. Perhaps, like mixed drinks it was for that reason but the more intoxicating. And because she did not hide her charms and was lavish with her smiles, there were more poor victims about her little feet than about any other woman at the sh.o.r.e that summer. Men talked about her in the smoking rooms and billiard rooms and compared her to vamps of other seasons, and decided she had left them all in the shade.

She was a perfect production of the modern age, more perfect than others because she knew how to do the boldest things with that cherubic air that bereft sin of its natural ugliness and made it beautiful and delicious, as if degradation had suddenly become an exalted thing, like some of the old rites in a Pagan Temple, and she a lovely priestess. And when each new folly was over there was she with her innocent baby air, and her pure childlike face that looked dreamily out from its frame of little girl hair, and seemed not to have been soiled at all. And so men who played her games lost their sense of sin and fell that much lower than those who sin and know it and are afraid to look themselves in the face. When a man loses his sense of shame, of being among the pigs, he is in a far country indeed.

But Opal Verrons sauntering forth to the Hotel piazza in company with three of her quondam admirers suddenly lost her luxurious air of nestling content. The hotel clerk handed her two telegrams as she pa.s.sed the desk. She tore them open carelessly, but her eyes grew wide with horror as she read.

Percy Emerson had been arrested. He had run over a woman and a baby and both were in a hospital in a critical condition. He would be held without bail until it was seen whether they lived.

She drew in her breath with a frightened gasp and bit at her red lip with her little sharp teeth. A pretty child with floating curls and dainty apparel ran laughing across her way, its hand outstretched to a tiny white dog that was dancing after her, and Opal gave a sharp cry and tore the telegram into small bits. But when she opened the second message her face paled under its delicate rouge as she read: "Mortimer McMarter killed in an accident when his car collided with a truck. His body lies at Saybrook Inn. We find your address on his person, with a request to let you know if anything happens to him. What do you wish done with the body?"

Those who watched her face as she read say that it took on an ashen color and she looked years older. Her real spirit seemed to be looking forth from those wide limpid eyes for an instant, the spirit of a coward who had been fooling the world; the spirit of a lost soul who had grown old in sin; the spirit of a soul who had stepped over the bounds and sinned beyond her depth.

She looked about upon them all, stricken, appalled,--not sorry but just afraid,--and not for her friends, but for herself! And then she gave a horrid little lost laugh and dropping the telegram as if it had burned her, she flung out her voice upon them with a blaze in her big eyes and a snarl in her lute-voice:

"Well, I wasn't to blame was I? They all were grown men, weren't they?

It was up to them. _I'm_ going to get out of here! This is an _awful_ place!"

She gave a shudder and turning swiftly fled to the elevator, catching it just as the door was being shut, and they saw her rising behind the black and gold grating and waving a mocking little white hand at them as they watched her amazed. Then one of them stooped and picked up the telegram. And while they still stood at the doorway wondering some one pointed to a brilliant blue car that was sliding down the avenue across the beach road.

"She has gone!" they said looking at one another strangely. Did she really care then?

The dinner at Sabbath Valley parsonage was a good one. It was quite different from any dinner Laurie Shafton had ever eaten before. It had a taste that he hadn't imagined just plain chicken and mashed potatoes and bread and b.u.t.ter and coffee and cherry pie could have.

Those were things he seldom picked out from a menu, and he met them as something new and delicious, prepared in this wonderful country way.

Also the atmosphere was queer and interesting.

The minister had helped him into the dining-room, a cheery room with a bay window looking toward the church and a window box of nasturtiums in which the bees hummed and buzzed.

The girl came in and acknowledged the casual introduction of her father with a quite sophisticated nod and sat down across from him. And there was a _prayer_ at the beginning of the meal! Just as he was about to say something graceful to the girl, there was a _prayer_. It was almost embarra.s.sing. He had never seen one before like this. At a boarding school once he had experienced a thing they called "grace" which consisted in standing behind their chairs while the entire a.s.sembled hungry mult.i.tude repeated a poem of a religious nature. He remembered they used to spend their time making up parodies on it--one ran something about "this same old fish upon my plate," and rhymed with "hate." He stared at the lovely bowed hair of the girl across the table while it was going on, and got ready a remark calculated to draw her smiles, but the girl lifted eyes that seemed so far away he felt as though she did not see him, and he contented himself with replying to his host's question something about the part of the chicken he liked best. It was a queer home to him, it seemed so intimate. Even the chicken seemed to be a detail of their life together, perhaps because there was only one chicken, and one breast. Where he dwelt there were countless b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and everybody had a whole breast if he wanted it, or a whole chicken for the matter of that. Here they had to stop and ask what others liked before they chose for themselves. This a.n.a.lysis went queerly on in his mind while he sat waiting for his plate and wondering over the little things they were talking about. Mrs. Severn said Miss Saxon had been crying all through church, and she told her Billy had been away all night. She was awfully worried about his going with that baseball team.

A fleeting shadow pa.s.sed over the girl's face:

"Billy promised me he would be there to-day," she said thoughtfully, "something must have happened. I don't think Billy was with the baseball team--" then her eyes travelled away out the window to the distant hills, she didn't seem to see Laurence Shafton at all. It was a new experience for him. He was fairly good looking and knew it.

Who the deuce was this Billy? And what did she care about Miss Saxon crying? Did she care so much for Billy already? Would it be worth his while to make her uncare?

"Mrs. Carter wasn't out," said Mrs. Severn as she poured coffee, "I hope she's not having more trouble with her neuralgia."

The minister suddenly looked up from his carving:

"Did Mark come back yesterday, Marilyn?"

The girl drew a quick breath and brought back her eyes from the hills, but she did not look at the young man: "No, father he didn't come."

Who the deuce was _Mark_? Of course there would be several, but there was always _one_. Billy and Mark! It was growing interesting.

But Billy and Mark were not mentioned again, though a deep gravity seemed to have settled into the eyes of the family since their names had come up. Laurie decided to speak of the weather and the roads:

"Glorious weather we're having," he chirped out condescendingly, "But you certainly have the limit for roads. What's the matter with the highway? Had a Detour right in the best part of the road. Bridge down, it said, road flooded! Made the deuce of a time for me--!"

"Bridge?" remarked Marilyn looking up thoughtfully.

"Flood?" echoed the minister sharply.

"Yes. About two miles back where the highway crosses this valley. Put me in some fix. Had a bet on you know. Date with a lady. Staked a lot of money on winning, too. Hard luck," Then he looked across at Marilyn's attentive face. Ah! He was getting her at last! More on that line.

"But it'll not be all loss," he added gallantly with a gesture of admiration toward her, "You see I didn't have any idea I was going to meet _you_."

But Marilyn's eyes were regarding him soberly, steadily, a.n.a.lytically, without an answering smile. It was as if she did not like what he had said--if indeed she had heard it at all--as if she were offended at it.

Then the eyes look on an impersonal look and wandered thoughtfully to the mountains in the distance. Laurie felt his cheeks burn. He felt almost embarra.s.sed again, like during the prayer. Didn't the girl know he was paying her a compliment? Or was she such a prude that she thought him presuming on so slight an acquaintance? Her father was speaking:

"I don't quite understand," 'he said thoughtfully. "There is no bridge within ten miles, and nothing to flood the road but the Creek, which never was known to overflow its banks more than a few feet at most.

The highway is far above the valley. You must have been a bit turned around."

The young man laughed lightly:

"Well, perhaps I had a jag on. I'm not surprised. I'd been driving for hours and had to drink to keep my nerve till morning. There were some dandy spilling places around those mountain curves. One doesn't care to look out and see when one is driving at top speed."

Heavens! What had he said now? The girl's eyes came round to look him over again and went through to his soul like a lightning flash and away again, and there was actually scorn on her lips. He must take another line. He couldn't understand this haughty country beauty in the least.

"I certainly did enjoy your music," he flashed forth with a little of his own natural gaiety in his voice that made him so universal a favorite.